How to See Yourself as You Really Are

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Tenzin Gyatso was the fifth of sixteen children born to a farming family. He was proclaimed the tulku (an Enlightened lama who has consciously decided to take rebirth) of the 13th Dalai Lama at the age of two. Like the two wings of a bird, love and insight work cooperatively to bring about enlightenment, says a fundamental Buddhist teaching. According to His Holiness the Dalai Lama, we each possess the ability to achieve happiness and a meaningful life, but the key to realizing that goal is self-knowledge. In "How to See Yourself As You Really Are, " the world's foremost Buddhist leader and recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize shows readers how to recognize and dispel misguided notions of self and embrace the world from a more realistic -- and loving -- perspective. The book's third part describes how to harness the power of meditative concentration with insight to achieve immersion in our own ultimate nature, which undermines our problems at their very foundation. The fourth and fifth parts discuss how people and things actually do exist, since they do not exist in the way we assume. The Dalai Lama draws readers into noticing how everything depends on thought -- how thought itself organizes what we perceive. His goal is to develop in us a clear sense of what it means to exist without misconception. Then the final part of the book explains the way this profound state of being enhances love by revealing how unnecessary destructive emotions and suffering actually are. In this way self-knowledge is seen as the key to personal development and positive relationships. Once we know how to put insight in the service of love and love in the service of insight, we come to the book's appendix, an overview of the steps for achieving altruistic enlightenment.

This book itself is an illustration of Tibet's contribution to world culture, reminding us of the importance of maintaining a homeland for its preservation. The light shining through the Dalai Lama's teachings has its source in that culture, offering insights and practices that so many of us need in ours. In this way, meditation is a long journey, not a single insight or even several insights. It gets more and more profound as the days, months, and years pass. Keep reading and thinking and meditating." everything is impermanent and subject to change, thus we shouldn't get attached to persons, things & situations or else it'll cause afflictive emotions You could do the same with people and their behaviors (How did the behavior come into being? Which of your thoughts/mindsets make you dis/like it?)] From there some nice points are made about meditation: even if many of us analytically/intellectually know the above realization about reality, to what degree have we thoroughly integrated it into our being such that the insight influences every thought and reaction we have? Does your arm feel intrinsically there? Do you take offense if someone falsely accuses you? Well, meditation can help you weave insight into the fabric of your being! ;-)

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Buddhist psychology is known for its detailed descriptions of the mind's workings, and His Holiness uses these insights in a practical way by helping readers catch hold of these processes through their own experience. His central theme is that our skewed perceptions of body and mind lead to disastrous mistakes, ranging from lust at the one extreme to raging hatred at the other, so that we are consistently being led into trouble as if pulled by a ring in our nose. By developing insight into this process, we can free ourselves, and those around us, from these endless scenarios of pain. if we understand and train ourselves in these concepts, we have insight and can act with empathy and compassion The only way to gain this understanding is internal. You need to give up false beliefs you are superimposing on the way things really are; there is no external means of removing lust and hatred. If you are pierced by a thorn, you can remove it forever with a needle, but to get rid of an internal attitude, you must see clearly the mistaken beliefs on which it is based. This calls for using reason to explore the true nature of phenomena and then concentrate on what has been understood." urn:lcp:howtoseeyourself00bsta:epub:82787959-f3c9-46d4-b934-b36a1f101cd3 Foldoutcount 0 Identifier howtoseeyourself00bsta Identifier-ark ark:/13960/t4rj8bn3c Invoice 1213 Isbn 9780743290456

Step-by-step exercises help readers shatter their false assumptions and ideas and see the world as it actually exists. By directing our attention to the false veneer that so bedazzles our senses and our thoughts, His Holiness sets the stage for discovering the reality behind appearances. But getting past one's misconceptions is only a prelude to right action, and the book's final section describes how to harness the power of meditative concentration to the service of love, and vice versa, so that true altruistic enlightenment is attained. Like the two wings of a bird, love and insight work cooperatively to bring about enlightenment, says a fundamental Buddhist teaching. According to His Holiness the Dalai Lama, we each possess the ability to achieve happiness and a meaningful life, but the key to realizing that goal is self-knowledge. In How to See Yourself As You Really Are, the world's foremost Buddhist leader and recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize shows readers how to recognize and dispel misguided notions of self and embrace the world from a more realistic -- and loving -- perspective.The book “How to See Yourself as You Really Are” by the Dalai Lama, is good book that talks a lot about human nature. It goes through chapters of how the human mind sees itself. Then he goes on to tell you helpful ways of understanding yourself, or “how to see yourself as you really are.” He explains all of this from a Buddhist perspective, and helps to give good tips on how you can reach the proper state of mind. Full of insights and very practical, this important book by the Dalai Lama shows that self-knowledge is the key to personal development and creating positive relationships

The book will not be understood at first read, or in one sit. It contains many esoteric Buddhist teachings and therefore will be hard to grasp initially, for both those who are and are not really familiar with Buddhism I believe. Having said so, the book can be read by the chapters it has already been divided into. I think the author does this on purpose so as to guide the readers through the book more logically without interfering their reading mid-way while being able to get what the book seeks to convey better. That is, selflessness is actually a refutation of soul as independent of mind-body and a refutation of homunculus like theories of self. Taken a step further, one encounters an ancient description of the phenomenological realization that we don't know that 'reality' inherently exists but only our sensory observations. The concept of the book as taught by the Dalai Lama is that human beings each possess the ability to achieve happiness and a meaningful life, but the key to attaining that goal is self-knowledge. He teaches how to avoid the common negative notions of self and perspective on life and how to see the world from a more loving, human viewpoint. [1] Using personal experiences and anecdotes, the Dalai Lama explains the idea that combining meditative concentration and love, true enlightenment is attained and is the key to happiness.

My Book Notes

Reifications such as "morality/moral values" and "cyclic existence" weren't defined, so it took me almost the whole book to figure out most of them. While I may have thought somewhere at the beginning "Oh, ok, he means that", later on I got confused again about how the term was used. And I think it was only possible for me to figure them out at all because I already was familiar with the concepts using different (more common) words. I doubt that someone who's new to this would understand what he's talking about.